We should stop saying 'the West Bank' — because it's one big lie.

"The West Bank" is a political invention. Judea and Samaria are the historical truth.

The Israeli flag flying in Judea and Samaria (photo: Levi Meir Clancy/Unsplash)

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This is a guest essay by David E. Firester, the author of “Failure to Adapt: How Strategic Blindness Undermines Intelligence, Warfare, and Perception.”

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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At first glance, “the West Bank” sounds like a simple geographic description, the western bank of the Jordan River.

In practice, it is a political label with heavy baggage, quietly encoding a story in which Judea and Samaria (the Jews’ historical and biblical homeland) are presumed to be inherently “Palestinian” land under Israeli occupation, and in which Jewish communities there are automatically branded “settlements” in violation of international law.

(As of January 1, 2025, approximately 500,000 Israeli Jews live in Judea and Samaria, amounting to approximately 5 percent of the Jewish state’s population; nearly 70 percent of Israelis want the State of Israel to extend full legal sovereignty over the disputed territory, according to a poll conducted early this year.)¹

If you accept that dictionary, the conclusion feels foregone. My contention is that we should not accept it — because the history, the legal record, and even ongoing democratic debate in the West show that this language is far more contested than its advocates admit.

For most of recorded history, the hill country north and south of Jerusalem has been known, by Jews and in many Christian sources, as Judea and Samaria. The Hebrew Bible, Second Temple literature, and later rabbinic texts all place core episodes of Jewish history in these regions: Hebron, Bethlehem, Shiloh, Beit El, and so on. Even under the Romans, Byzantines, and successive Muslim empires, those older names never entirely disappeared.

The modern label “Palestine” itself was originally a regional designation under imperial rule (Roman, then Ottoman), not a sovereign state. Under the British Mandate for Palestine (1922), the League of Nations charged Britain with “secur[ing] the establishment of the Jewish national home” in Palestine, while safeguarding the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities. The Mandate did not create an independent “Palestinian” state, nor did it recognize an exclusive Arab sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.

After 1948, the area that would later be labeled “the West Bank” came under Jordanian military occupation and then unilateral annexation, recognized only by a small handful of states. Jordan itself called this space “the West Bank” of the Hashemite Kingdom, a term that emphasized its attachment to Amman, not to a new “Palestinian” sovereignty.²

In other words, the now-standard vocabulary — “the West Bank,” “occupied ‘Palestinian’ territory” — is comparatively recent. It crystallized in the decades after 1967, when Israel took control of Judea and Samaria, in a defensive war against Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. The label that once served to fold the territory into Jordanian national space has since been re-branded as shorthand for inherently “Palestinian” land wrongfully held by Israel.

In its 2004 advisory opinion on Israel’s security barrier, the International Court of Justice treated the territory as “occupied Palestinian territory” and assessed Israeli communities there under Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The International Court of Justice’s advisory posture and institutional role differ materially from Israel’s High Court of Justice case-based jurisprudence, which operates within a distinct legal and evidentiary framework.

Many international institutions now routinely describe Judea and Samaria as “Occupied ‘Palestinian’ Territory.” The International Court of Justice, in its 2004 advisory opinion on Israel’s security barrier, treated the territory as “occupied ‘Palestinian’ territory” and that Israeli communities there violate Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israeli legal scholar David Kretzmer’s recent article in “Israel Law Review” summarizes what is now widely presented as the mainstream view. He argues that even though Judea and Samaria did not belong to a sovereign state when Israel took control in 1967, the law of belligerent occupation can still apply; and that the League of Nations Mandate did not give the Jews enduring legal rights there.³

Notice what this framework assumes. By calling the area “Occupied ‘Palestinian’ Territory,” it implies:

1. That there once was, or ought to have been, a distinct “Palestinian” sovereignty there, such that Israel is occupying their land.

2. That the territory is inherently and exclusively “Palestinian,” despite the deep Jewish historical connection and the Mandate’s emphasis on a Jewish national home.

3. That the legal question is largely settled, and that dissenting views are marginal and can be safely dismissed.

But modern “Palestinian” national identity took shape largely over the 20th century, and has often been rhetorically fused to claims of exclusive indigeneity and retrospective sovereignty. The point here is not to rehearse that full argument again, but to apply it to the cartographic and legal assumptions embedded in everyday vocabulary. When phrases like “occupied ‘Palestinian’ territories” or even the seemingly neutral “West Bank” are used uncritically, they risk converting a contemporary national identity into a presumed historical baseline of state title — treating disputed Mandate-era and post-1948 space as if it had always been the sovereign territory of a prior “Palestinian” polity.

When we casually describe Judea and Samaria as “occupied ‘Palestinian’ territory,” we are not neutrally stating a legal fact; we are taking sides in a contested historical and legal argument — and acting as if that argument is already over.

In reaction to the International Court of Justice opinion and United Nations practice, a long line of jurists has argued that Judea and Samaria are better described as disputed territory, not “occupied ‘Palestinian’ territory.” Their positions are often labeled “minority views,” but minority does not mean frivolous.

Already in the late 1960s, Israeli Professor of Law and diplomat Yehuda Z. Blum argued that when Jordan and Egypt seized Judea and Samaria and Gaza in 1948, they did so without lawful title; their annexations were widely unrecognized internationally. Hence there was no “reversioner” — no prior sovereign to whom the territory would automatically revert once their control ended.

Stephen Schwebel, later President of the International Court of Justice, similarly argued that between Israel and Jordan, Israel’s title to the territory captured in 1967 was superior, since Israel acted in self-defense against states that had already violated the UN Charter by attacking it.

Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs of the United States, Eugene Rostow, who helped draft UN Security Council Resolution 242, maintained that the resolution did not require Israel to withdraw from “all” the territories; rather, it contemplated territorial adjustments and recognized that the Mandate had created a legal framework in which Jews had a right of “close settlement” in the whole of the Mandate west of the Jordan.

More recently, Israeli jurist and Professor of Law Talia Einhorn has argued that Judea and Samaria cannot be treated as the sovereign territory of a “Palestinian” state that has never existed; that under the Mandate, Jews had a recognized legal right of settlement throughout the area; and that, at most, the territory is disputed between competing national movements.

Israeli legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich’s empirical work compares Judea and Samaria to other territories under dispute or occupation worldwide. He shows that many states maintain civilian populations in contested areas without being labeled international outlaws, and that states and institutions often apply a unique and unusually harsh standard only in the Israeli case.

An entry in Oxford’s Encyclopedia of Public International Law acknowledges these Mandate-based and “no prior sovereign” arguments but says they have been “refuted or have gained no traction” in practice. That line is revealing: It treats frequency of citation in UN bodies as decisive, as if legal truth were determined by vote count or repetition.

Even if one accepts that David Kretzmer accurately describes the current majority view in international institutions, it is misleading to suggest that the debate is closed. The very building blocks of that majority view have been subjected to sustained critique.

Professor of International Law Christian Tams argued that the International Court of Justice’s treatment of Israel’s self-defense arguments were “startling in its brevity” and difficult to reconcile with modern state practice, especially regarding self-defense against non-state actors.⁴

Michael J. Kelly, in the Fordham International Law Journal, concluded that in the same advisory opinion “context overtook the law” and that the International Court of Justice allowed the political environment to distort its legal analysis, damaging both its own credibility and the areas of law it touched.

More recently, Orde Kittrie and Bruce Rashkow — hardly fringe figures in international law — warned that the current International Court of Justice advisory process on Israel and the “Occupied ‘Palestinian’ Territory” risks further politicizing the Court and undermining core legal principles, including the law of self-defense and the limits of advisory jurisdiction.⁵

On the specific question of “settlements,” scholars like Eugene Kontorovich and practitioners like David M. Phillips have shown that there is no uniform state practice treating every civilian population transfer into disputed territory as a per se violation of Article 49(6), and that the Israeli case has been singled out for unique scrutiny.

You do not have to agree with every conclusion these authors reach. The point is narrower: David Kretzmer’s article leans heavily on International Court of Justice and UN practice to dismiss Mandate-based arguments as outliers, but those institutional baselines are themselves targets of serious, peer-reviewed criticism. Calling Judea and Samaria “occupied ‘Palestinian’ territory” is therefore not an objective description of “settled law,” but a choice to align with one side of a live legal debate.

Of course, this contest over terminology is not limited to legal journals. It has now reached legislatures.

In February 2025, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton introduced the “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,” which would require federal agencies to use “Judea and Samaria” instead of “the West Bank” in official documents, with narrow exceptions for treaty obligations. In announcing the bill, Cotton stated that “the Jewish people’s legal and historic rights to Judea and Samaria goes back thousands of years” and called “the West Bank” a “politically charged term” that the United States should stop using.

U.S. Congresswoman Claudia Tenney introduced the House of Representatives version, which would prohibit federal funds from being used to issue materials that refer to Judea and Samaria as “the West Bank” and would amend existing statutes to substitute the biblical terminology.

At the state level, Florida Congressman Chase Tramont has proposed HB 31, which would ban state agencies from using “West Bank” in official materials and instead mandate “Judea and Samaria,” explicitly framing this as a stand for “truth over revisionism” and for Israel’s historic claim to the land.⁶

These bills may or may not become law, but their very existence underscores a key fact: The terminology is contested even within democratic polities that are otherwise friendly to international institutions. Reasonable lawmakers, informed by history and by the same minority legal scholarship described above, explicitly reject “the West Bank” as misleading.

So, why should we insist on Judea and Samaria instead of “the West Bank”?

Because words carry maps inside them.

“The West Bank” invites you to picture a generic riverbank that Israel grabbed in 1967, belonging by default to some other party. Judea and Samaria remind you that this is the historic Jewish heartland, that the Mandate explicitly contemplated a Jewish national home there, and that there has never been a sovereign “Palestinian” state from which Israel stole this territory.

Choosing Judea and Samaria does not answer every question about borders, rights, or policy. It does not deny that Arab residents of the region have genuine individual and collective claims that must be addressed. It simply refuses to preload the conversation with a false premise: that we are dealing with “occupied ‘Palestinian’ territory” whose fate should be determined as if Jewish historical and legal claims are an afterthought.

International law is not irrelevant, but it can also be contested, especially here, and Jews and our allies should stop acting as if only one side’s terminology has legal or moral legitimacy. When even mainstream scholars acknowledge that Mandate-based arguments exist, and when serious critics demonstrate flaws and politicization in key International Court of Justice opinions, the honest conclusion is that this is a hard case, not a closed one.

Minority views in law have a habit of becoming tomorrow’s precedents. Regardless of what international bodies currently say, Jews remain indigenous to Judea and Samaria. Our language should reflect that reality, not erase it.

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1. “Israel approves 764 new homes in Judea, Samaria.” JNS.

2. Einhorn, Talia. 2012. “The Status of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the Settlements in International Law.” Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

3. “The West Bank as Occupied Territory: The Irrelevance of the Mandate and the Lack of Jordanian Sovereignty.” Israel Law Review.

4. Tams, Christian J. 2005. “Light Treatment of a Complex Problem: The Law of Self-Defence in the Wall Case.” European Journal of International Law 16 (5): 963–78.

5. Kittrie, Orde F., and Bruce Rashkow. 2023. “The Pending Israel–Palestine ICJ Advisory Opinion: Threats to Legal Principles and Security.” Articles of War (Lieber Institute, West Point), November 6, 2023.

6. Caputo, Liv. 2025. “GOP Lawmaker Wants to Eradicate ‘West Bank’ Mentions and Replace It with ‘Judea and Samaria’.” Florida Phoenix, September 24, 2025.